We have wondered what a complex archaeal cell might look like ever since 2014. It’s been a long road (and the journey is far from over), but it’s a good time to pause for breath and look. These Asgard archaeal cells are a surprise! And that is the joy of being a cell biologist.

Florian also adapted expansion microscopy to archaeal cells, which will most certainly leverage future exciting insights into Asgards. Florian - we're looking forward to reading🤓 your future papers 📜
Soo glad that we all could be a part of your journey 🙏
-Martin

Florian found that their peculiar cellular architecture🦠 was scaffolded by an actin cytoskeleton🦴. In a follow-up, Florian et al. also discovered microtubules comprising eukaryote-like tubulins, which brought this line of research back to my own roots!-- microtubules in bacteria

Here is one of the first images Florian recorded in 2021 after many hours of hunting Asgards in the microscope. My advice at the time: "Keep going- just don't tell your structural biology colleagues that you're burning days of Krios time in pursuit of weird cells in a poorly characterized sample ;)"